Figure 3 Toolbox window with its controls available commonly.

Control Description

1. Pointer : used to interact with the controls on the form
2. PictureBox : used to display images
3. TextBox : used to accept user input which can display only editable text
4. Frame : used to group other controls
5. CommandButton : used to initiate an action by pressing on the button
6. CheckBox : used to do a choice for user (checked or unchecked)
7. OptionButton : used in groups where one at a time can be true
8. ListBox : used to provide a list of items
9. ComboBox : used to provide a short list of items
10. HScrollBar : a horizontal scrollbar
11. VScrollBar : a vertical scrollbar
12. Timer : used to perform tasks in specified intervals.
13. DriveListBox : used to access to the system drives
14. DirListBox : used to access to the directories on the system
15. FileListBox : used to access to the files in the directory
16. Shape : used to draw circles, rectangles, squares, ellipses
17. Line : used to draw lines
18. Image : used to display images. But less capability than the PictureBox
19. Data : used to connect a database
20. OLE : used to interact with other windows applications
21. Label : used to display texts which cannot be edited

Project -Project 1

The window titled Project -Project 1 is called the project explorer which contains the project files Property window displays the properties of a form or a control. Properties are attributes such as size, name etc. as well as the form all the controls have its own set of properties Toolbox window contains a set of controls which are used to customize forms. Using this controls user can create an interface between user and the application

Figure 2 Standard Exe project

Getting started

To open the Visual Basic environment and to work with it select and click on Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 in the start menu. When Visual Basic is loaded the New Project dialog shown in figure 1.1 will be displayed with the types available in Visual Basic. You can notice that Standard Exe is highlighted by default. Standard Exe allows the user to create standard executable. Standard executable is a type which has most of the common features of Visual basic.

Visual basic 6. 0

Visual basic is a high level programming language developed from the earlier DOS version called BASIC. Although Visual Basic .NET is the dominator in the current IT trend, Visual basic 6. 0 hasn't lost it's powerful status among the programmers. Visual Basic was developed from the BASIC programming language. In the 1970s, Microsoft started developing ROM-based interpreted BASIC for the early microprocessor-based computers. In 1982, Microsoft QuickBasic revolutionized Basic and was legitimized as a serious development language for MS-DOS environment. Later on, Microsoft Corporation created the enhanced version of BASIC called Visual Basic for Windows. Visual Basic is an event-driven programming language. This is called because programming is done in a graphical environment unlike the previous version BASIC where programming is done in a text only environment and executed sequentially in order to control the user interface. Visual Basic enables the user to design the user interface quickly by drawing and arranging the user elements. Due to this spent time is saved for the repetitive task.